


Tarnished Hunter

by VerdantMoth



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Evil Kate Argent, Hunter Stiles Stilinski, M/M, Wolf Peter Hale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-10
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-21 07:07:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14279643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VerdantMoth/pseuds/VerdantMoth
Summary: Stiles, he knows that name. Remembers it from his childhood, like a hazy dream he’s on the cusp of forgetting. He cannot let these people have his wolf. Not when they’ve taken so much from him already. But he nods, and he adjust the collar around the human neck. The Lady walks away, but before she leaves them for good she says, “The Lady Argent will want to see him. She’ll be here in three days.”





	Tarnished Hunter

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the letter "c" and the word "Captive"

They burned the fleur-de-lis into his forearm on Stiles’ eleventh birthday when he thought to run back to his father. At fourteen they carve mountains into his back with leather because he dared have compassion for the wolves his age. No one believed he’d accidentally left the lock unlatched. And at sixteen they stitch runes and ash into his arms and bind him to them until he is of age. At seventeen he claimed his first pelt because he could put it off no longer; he spends the rest of the evening on his knees vomiting into the grass. He is nineteen when he gets his first captive, all his own responsibility to break. 

The wolf is the color of tarnished silver, like his first pelt, and he earns his title when he wrestles the wolf to the ground and its claws break his fleur-de-lis scar. They call him “The Tarnished Hunter” and when he wraps the wolfsbane ropes around the beast, the celebrate by whipping him for keeping it alive. He reminds them this wolf has blue eyes. They’ve never caught a blue-eyes before. They’ve only heard the rumors of the innocence killers. 

His Lady snarls in his face and he doesn’t tell her she’s more animal than his wolf. She grips his face tight, so that he can feel the bruises forming on his chin. He hates that he is afraid of her nails, sharper than any claws. “He’s your responsibility. If the Lady Argent finds out, it’s on you.” They find an ash-metal cage and it takes six of them to drag the wolf into it, but they collar him and leave him there. 

He doesn’t think the Lady Argent is going to mind. She seems to rather enjoy stripping the wolves apart piece by piece. He’s seen the aftermath of her carnage. He’s cleaned her cages before. Somehow, he thinks she’d be more proud of him than any hunter ever has been. His wolf is special though, he can feel it. Somewhere deep inside he knows he was meant to find this wolf. Meant to save this captive the way he couldn’t save the other wolves. There’s something… a tug in him that weathers every fist and strap of leather. 

The wolf doesn’t trust him, not that Stiles is surprised. He spends his days under his Lady on the training mat and his nights avoiding snapping teeth and vicious claws. He can’t get the wolf to shift back and he doesn’t know if it’s because the creature is just that stubborn or if it’s feral. He steals as much food as he can for the wolf, entire meals when hunters are punished and scraps from his own plate. He tries to groom the wolf and he earns several more scars for his troubles. 

Sometimes Stiles speaks to the wolf. Low murmerings where he tells him of his day, of how he hates his Lady, of how he’s thankful she finds him too ugly for her sheets. Sometimes he hums lullabies that he remembers from a time when he had a mother and a father. “Sometimes, wolf, I wonder if they’re still out there, looking for their son.” Sometimes he just cries, and those are the days the wolf seems the most human. It curls around him, snapping and snarling, but with its head in his laps. Stiles likes to think it’s putting on a front, that it only wants to appear spiteful.

His Lady comes to him one day. “Make the wolf shift, or we’ll kill it. We can get nothing from the animal.”

Stiles nods and when he tells his wolf, the beast howls. Stiles steps back in fear, the first he has felt in a long time around the silver wolf. He goes towards the door, but the wolf blocks his escape. It’s snarling and snapping, foaming at the mouth. The wolf pounces, and suddenly Stiles is on his stomach with the wolf’s teeth around his neck. It does not bite though, just hovers above him. Stiles is very careful, lays very still, and tries to bare his neck even more. To submit the way he knows the wolf wants. 

The wolf above him whines and Stiles doesn’t understand the noise. Suddenly there’s a very naked man above him, stretched across his back. Stiles yelps, startles up and scrambles away from him. The Lady stands above the once-wolf with a smug look and a syringe. “Good boy, Stiles. Although I wasn’t sure you weren’t going to be dinner. Seems the beast has formed an attachment to you. Chain him up, and when he’s awake you can begin the fun. It looks like we have a Hale here.”

Stiles, he knows that name. Remembers it from his childhood, like a hazy dream he’s on the cusp of forgetting. He cannot let these people have his wolf. Not when they’ve taken so much from him already. But he nods, and he adjust the collar around the human neck. The Lady walks away, but before she leaves them for good she says, “The Lady Argent will want to see him. She’ll be here in three days.”

Stiles tries not to flinch. He simply binds his wolf and leaves the naked man laying on the floor. He has three days to figure something out. Three days to steal food and supplies for two men and a journey he doesn't know how long it'll be. 

He comes back that night with a spare set of his own clothing. They look ridiculous on the man, the shirt too tight in the shoulders and the pants too long, but it covers his modesty. Though Stiles might be the only person in the whole compound to care about that. The wolf, for his part just stares at stiles with amusement in his eyes. “So you’re the one they call the Tarnished Hunter. Too old when he was stolen to be properly broken. Too weak in the heart to do what he needs to.”

Stiles flinches. “Do you want to escape or not, old man?”

The wolf-man laughs, and the sound gurgles in his throat likes it’s not quite built for laughing. Like he’s still a little more beast than human. “I’ve been waiting for you to be ready, Tarnished Hunter.”

Stiles growls, as best his human throat will let him, and lunges. He has no intentions of landing the wolf, so he’s surprised when he finds himself stretched along the length of a wolf who has let himself be pinned. “My name, pup, is Stiles.”

The wolf flips them, noses at his neck, and snorts. “I know who you are.” Then he releases Stiles. “Come back tomorrow with supplies. Third shift and we will get out of here.” He pauses, and then grabs Stiles by the shoulders and pulls him close, so that they are eye to eye. He kisses him, just once, and says “Don’t ever think I’ll be your captive again.”

Stiles wouldn’t dream of it.


End file.
